Over the years, we've speculated that Dumbledore tacitly approved of and possibly encouraged the Marauders' bullying for various reasons--indifference (whether clueless or callous), a liking for charming bad boys, a liking for chaos generally, as part of a plan to earn their loyalty and prepare them as fighters for the Order of the Phoenix, a ( Read more... )

I've been trying to piece together the Marauders' group dynamic from what little we see, and found something that didn't quite square with how the characters themselves describe things. I know, shocker. But it's a discrepancy which might mean something ( Read more... )

Thanks to torchedsong for bringing up the topic of character complexity (or the destruction thereof). JKR's desperate attempts to force characters that had grown beyond her control back into simpler, Really Good vs. Really Bad boxes in DH always gets me thinking ( Read more... )

When I was a kid, I didn’t think too hard about Lupin’s boggart lesson. It was a cool creature, a DADA teacher finally taught them something useful, and we got a clue to Lupin’s fears and a segue into Lupin teaching Harry the Patronus Charm. Neat, right ( Read more... )

[Kreacher isn’t back for days. In the meantime, Lupin arrives!]

( Read Chapter 11 )

An idea sparked by Oryx's "Appendix B" post on the Order of the Phoenix during VoldWar I ( Read more... )

( Secret Keeper )

Oh, crap.

This may be my most hated chapter in this book. Given the stiff competition, that’s saying something. Let me check my supplies.

Silver bullets? Check.

Semi-automatic rifle? Check.

Telescopic laser sight? Check.

OK. Cover me, people. I’m goin’ in.

This is another chapter with a strange picture at the beginning. Mary GrandPrè’s drawing of Remus ( Read more... )

Because I was re-reading some old recaps in various places, and it suddenly struck me that there's an awful lot of speculation that if someone screwed up/deliberately skipped the contraceptive potion, that someone must have been Tonks. I've wondered about that possibility myself. It seems primarily based on two factors: (1) Tonks was pursuing Remus ( Read more... )

In Chapter 22 of POA, Lupin tells Harry:
Professor Dumbledore managed to convince Fudge that I was trying to save your lives. That was the final straw for Severus.

Wait. What?

Professor Dumbledore managed to convince Fudge of WHAT?

Severus believed in the Shrieking Shack that what he’d witnessed was “the proof” that Remus had been “helping ( Read more... )